


California Boys Need To Get a Clue

by clawstoagunfight (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, this whole thing is ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 16:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3857884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/clawstoagunfight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Derek has a crazy neighbor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	California Boys Need To Get a Clue

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't even know what's going on here.

For Derek, the perks of working in real estate are that he gets to see the very best kinds of homes. He’s always loved architecture, but he’s never been talented enough at drafting or carpentry to pursue either as any kind of career. But he loves houses. He loves the ways that families are built from the walls and the carpeted floors. He likes telling his clients about the histories of the neighborhood, or of the building, or explaining away the scratches on the hardwood with anecdotes of happy puppies and overzealous children. And the best part of working in real estate is that Derek’s good at it.

He’s good enough at it that he took a hiatus from the small town buying and selling of Beacon Hills and moved to the other side of the country to do it. In New York, Derek worked for one of the most prestigious real estate companies in the city, but there was always something missing. To the people there, houses were just that—houses—they were never _homes_. Derek wanted to sell homes like happiness, not simply as a convenient place for people to sleep.

So, when the call comes that he’s offered a job back home, he takes it without a second’s hesitation.

It’s surprisingly easy for him to pack up all of his belongings and leave the loft he’d been renting. It’d been a good home for him, but it’s not where he wants to spend the rest of his life. He wants a house to call his own, wants to live in a place where he belongs, rather than being just another tenant in a busy building on a busier block in the city.

He doesn’t actually expect to find his dream home so easily. Things like that don’t just happen to people. Perfect homes don’t just fall in to people’s laps at the perfect moment. Never in his life has something gone so smoothly for him. From the opening bid to his first offer being accepted and the bank signing his loan the very same day, he thinks it’s too good to be true, that there must be something wrong with the house. But the inspection checks out; the floors are the perfect shade of cherry wood and the kitchen island is big enough to actually make a boat out of. The oversized master suite and working fireplace in the living room are really just the cherry on top, even if he is in the process of cleaning out the soot from inside with a window squeegee. He paints the walls and moves in, feeling like he’s finally where he’s supposed to be, feeling like, for the first time in his life, everything is finally perfect.

And then it falls apart.

The day starts out innocuous. He gets up, goes through his routine, has an awesome day at work, finds out that if he keeps going like he is, he’ll be up for a raise, and goes home. He’s got some pip in his step when he walks through his front door, setting his briefcase on the ground and toeing off his shoes, before turning around, wanting nothing more than to eat the delicious looking cupcakes Laura got him from the bakery downtown while he sits down on his oversized couch and watches the night’s basketball game.

But he freezes when he turns around. Because there, sitting on _his_ couch, eating _his_ cupcakes, with frosting all over his face and fingers, and crumbs on his stained t-shirt, is a man that Derek’s never seen before.

Derek’s not quite sure what the exact sound that comes out of his mouth is, but he thinks it’s probably something between a hiss and a growl. He lunges toward his fireplace before he even thinks about it, picking up the slightly-dirty squeegee and swinging it back around toward the intruder, holding it like a baseball bat and taking a step toward where the man is watching him with wide eyes, like a deer caught in headlights.

“What are you doing in my house?” Derek bites out, taking another threatening step closer. “Who are you? How the hell did you get in here?”  

The man reaches his frosting-covered fingers up to run through his wild, dark hair, and then does the unexpected: he starts to shout incoherently and flees from the living room, heading up the stairs. Derek swears and follows him up the flight, reaching out with the squeegee to try to trip the older man, but he’s too fast for Derek and runs toward the bathroom down the hall. Before Derek even catches up, the intruder locks himself in Derek’s bathroom.

He takes a second to just blankly stare at the door, wondering what the hell just happened and already mourning the loss of the uninterrupted sanctity of his home which has now been besmirched. He sighs heavily and reaches into his slacks for his cell phone.

It doesn’t take long for information to patch him in to the Beacon County Sheriff’s Department. He talks to the operator, tells them the situation, and then his address, before he’s transferred to someone else.

“Sheriff Stilinski here. I hear someone broke into your house?”

Derek sighs again and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes,” he all but seethes at this point, “there’s a man who locked himself in my bathroom. Can you send someone to get him out, or not?”

The sheriff is silent for a moment, and when he speaks again, it’s with a kind voice, “Look, Son, you live on the corner of Willow and 8th, right? In that renovated Victorian?” Derek grumbles the affirmative. “The man who broke in, can you describe him to me?” Derek does, for what feels like the umpteenth time, and when he gets to the part about how the man ate his cupcakes in his fridge and the remnants of it are in his hair, the sheriff laughs through the line.

Derek tries his best to glare a hole all the way to the sheriff’s office. “I really don’t see how any of this is funny. Those cupcakes were Cupcake Wars winners. You don’t mess with another man’s junk food.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hale, it’s just that I know exactly who it is that broke into your house. Unfortunately, I know him a little too well.”

Derek bangs his head against the wall by the bathroom and hears the man in the bathroom shriek. “Awesome. That means I can press charges when you get him out. Can’t you send over like a patrol or the fire department?”

“Well, we could, but odds are that the only way any of them are going to get him out is to break down the door.”

Derek feels a little faint at the thought of more people in his house, more people marring the perfection of everything this house symbolizes for him. He thinks that a splintered door would be something that would physically pain him. “No! No, I don’t want that. Please, isn’t there anything you can do?”

He hears the sheriff sigh. “I’ll think of something. You just hang in there, Son.” And then the line goes dead.

Derek doesn’t know how long he stares down at his phone, hoping that if he looks hard enough, it might ring and someone might explain to him what’s going on, or even just call to tell him that he’s being Punk’d. For a moment, he seriously considers throwing his phone at the wall, but instead just angrily shoves it back into his pocket.

He hears something crash from the bathroom and can’t take it anymore. He stomps over and knocks loudly on the door. “Hey you! I called the cops on you! When they get here, they’re gonna arrest your ass. That’s what you get for breaking into my house and sitting on my couch and eating my food.” The man makes a loud sound and Derek half wonders if he’s laughing or crying. He sighs, “You know, all I wanted was to come home and watch some basketball. I just wanted to watch the game, man. Why did you have to ruin it?”

“That’s why God invented the DVR.”

Derek whips around, turning toward the sound at the end of the hallway, squeegee raised and at the ready. There’s a man standing there—younger, maybe a few years younger than Derek—like he owns the place. His eyes drop disinterestedly to the instrument in Derek’s hands. “How did you get in here?”

The man motions to the stairs. “The door was unlocked, dude. And really? A squeegee? What are you gonna do, clean us to death?” The man rolls his dark eyes and shakes his head, causing his messy brown hair to fall a little onto his forehead. “You know what you need is a proper bat. Baseball is the true sport of men, anyway. I mean, have you ever seen the Mets play? Talk about a religious experience, okay. And who actually _likes_ to watch basketball on TV, I mean really.” The man steps closer and Derek is dumbfounded enough that he doesn’t even react other than to lower the squeegee as the man reaches out to lightly knock on the bathroom door, “Isn’t that right, Coach?” He half-yells through the door.

Derek hears something that sounds like “Right on” before the other man is speaking again.

“Hell yeah! But Coach, remember what my dad always says about boundaries? What do we call crossing the line?”

Derek hears a mumbled “Foul” through the door.

“And what did you do here today?” The man is speaking softer now, like a teacher trying to instill an important lesson to a child. Derek can’t help but he a little enraptured by the man. From this close, he can see the way his eyes crinkle a little at the edges, and the playful set to his mouth, even as his eyes hold a seriousness that the situation calls for. The thought passes through Derek’s mind that the man compliments the colors he picked for the hallway better than the display of art behind him.

“I hit a foul.” The man in the bathroom—Coach?—answers.

The other man nods, even though the intruder can’t see it. “Now are you gonna come out and apologize to our new neighbor, or are you gonna stay in there all day?”

Wait, neighbor? “Wait, neighbor?” Derek says dumbly. “Which of you is my new neighbor?”

The man looks over at Derek, his brown eyes looking him over—Derek vainly hopes it’s him checking Derek out. “I live two houses down. Bobby here,” he motions to the bathroom and Derek notices just how nice his hands look, “lives between us.” The man snorts unattractively (but Derek can’t stop a small part of his brain from finding it charming), “Welcome to the neighborhood, man.”

The man in the bathroom—Coach? Bobby?—chooses that moment to open the door. The first thing Derek notices is that he’s washed his hands. The second is that he looks a little like a kicked puppy. The man, who Derek can see now is quite a bit older than him, looks up at him. “I’m sorry for trying to get to know my new neighbor, who won’t even share his food with me! And then lunges at me with a window cleaner like that time I got lost in Mexico and woke up 90 miles away with a missing testicle, okay! It’s the memories, Stiles,” The man says, turning to the younger man, grabbing at the collar of his shirt, a crazed look in his eyes. “It’s the memories. Make them stop!”

The younger man—Stiles? What kind of a name is that?—awkwardly pats the older man on the back. “Alright, Coach, let’s get you out of here. I’m sure Mr. Hale here wouldn’t mind us out of his hair. He’s got a very important game to watch and a nice big house to keep him company.”

And that—that’s suddenly not what Derek wants. He wouldn’t mind Stiles staying with him, staying here in his house, maybe to watch the game, maybe to share what’s left of his cupcakes, maybe to keep in his bed… “You’re leaving?”

Stiles looks back at him, a hesitancy in his eyes. “Well, I was gonna take Bobby back to my house. I would take him home, but odds are he’ll just end up at my place, drinking my dad’s beer and eating all the junk food that I don’t want my dad to eat anyway.”

Derek gives him a weary look. “I take it this is something that happens a lot?”

The corner of Stiles’ lips turn up. “You have no idea, Dude” Stiles starts to descend the stairs with Bobby in tow.

“Derek.”

He stops and throws a glance at Derek over his shoulder, raising his eyebrow in question.

“My name,” he clears his throat, looking down at the squeegee in his hands and feeling completely and utterly ridiculous, “It’s Derek.”

The look Stiles gives him is long, like he’s sizing Derek up, or like he can see right through him. Derek tries his best to suppress a shiver at the intensity in the man’s eyes. “I know.” And then he’s smiling impishly, “See you around, Derek.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are appreciated! 
> 
> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://clawstoagunfight.tumblr.com/).


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